August 2015 In the News: Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom Goes Back to School

Each month, our staff reads hundreds of media reports on the subject of school nutrition. We curate our favorites in a monthly blog post we call, “In the News.” Highlighting positive stories about the great things going on in school cafeterias helps us in many ways: providing inspiration, connecting school nutrition professionals from across the country, and promoting those programs and individuals who are taking the extra step to make their school nutrition program the very best it can be.

Here we are at the end of August, saying goodbye to summer and hello to another exciting school year. It has been a very eventful summer for the Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom! Although school was out for students and teachers, we continued to work with school nutrition directors, managers, and their staffs across the country, preparing for the implementation of breakfast-in-the-classroom in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Virginia, and beyond.

If you’re following the Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom on Facebook you may have seen us share some recent media coverage about some of our breakfast-in-the-classroom grant recipients; in Kansas, in Arizona, and in Erie, Pennsylvania. We will be rolling out breakfast at even more schools in the coming weeks and months, and sharing their stories with you here—we can’t wait for you to meet the newest members of our growing team of school breakfast champions.

We also traveled to Salt Lake City this summer to present back-to-back education sessions on breakfast-in-the-classroom at the School Nutrition Association’s Annual National Conference. (You can access the archived presentations here and here.) It was a wonderful opportunity to share our lessons learned from BIC, and to hear from school nutrition professionals about their own experiences, challenges, and strategies for success.

Earlier in August, Walmart kicked off their own back-to-school celebration with a terrific blog entitled ‘Filling Stomachs, and Fueling Minds’ written by Jessica Shelly, Food Service Director of Cincinnati Public Schools. (Read our 2012 interview with Jessica, where we talk about reimbursable vending machines.) The Walmart Foundation has provided $5 million in back-to-school grants for Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom, which we have used to increase access to school breakfast for tens of thousands of students—and we’re not done yet. There is still time to apply for school breakfast grants if you are in one of our eligible states. Are you ready to be a school breakfast champion?

In September we will be bringing you updates from several schools serving breakfast-in-the-classroom thanks to their Partners for BIC grant; stay tuned for stories from USD 246 Northeast in Karma, KS and Butts County, Georgia, as well as an update from Jenny Johns in Erie, Pennsylvania, among others.